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Hey guys,

Well I started a group for Mordheim, as I use to play it back in the day and thought it would be great to bring it back again. Anyways I was hoping if you guys could help me out. I found a website that pretty much lists most of the town criers, campaigns, and Warbands (unofficial ones as well that GW made) and from what I remember the game wasn't exactly balanced.

What warbands should I allow or disallow such as their game breaking or severely under powered, and are there any rules that should be changed and what not?

Right now we have 1 dwarf player, 1 dark elf player, and 1 person considering ostlanders.

Everywhere I've read has said that Shadow Warriors (High Elves) are super overpowered. Soooo those should probably be out.

Whenever someone mentions starting Mordheim and balance concerns I point them to Coreheim. Since you're running the group it might be easier for you to try switching to that. You'll keep all the flavor and feel of Mordheim without the obvious "winning" combinations and balance issues the original struggled from.

Very generally speaking, the "farther away" you get from the rulebook, the less balanced the warbands are. So the rulebook warbands are the best balanced.

The early Town Cryer warbands -- such as Orcs, Dwarfs, Beastmen, various human mercs, etc -- are a little hit-and-miss. Some are stronger than others, although even the stronger ones tend to have significant weaknesses to go with their strengths (Dwarfs are a good example of this, being tough and shooty but extremely slow). Of this group, I'd probably consider banning Shadow Warriors just because they get disgusting when they max out.

Then you have the alternate setting -- Lustria, Khemri, Empire in Flames -- warbands, and IMO this is where you really need to beware. Some are decently well balanced against the rulebook warbands, and some most definitely are not. If you want to play Lustrian warbands for instance, then it's probably best to stick with only the Lustrian setting and warbands, and not mix-and-match. The Empire in Flames stuff is just chock full of rules weirdness, the best example probably being the plague cart. The Carnival of Chaos is a tremendously cool warband, but the plague cart caused us endless issues thanks to poorly written rules.

So should I just try to keep it to rule book warbands and town criers? I know I was considering ostlanders and another guy was wanting to do Dark elves which I think are apart of the Lustria campaign.

It depends on your campaign and how you want to run it. Some people like a looser, more RPG-styled MH campaign. In which case, don't sweat it. Others like a tighter, more competitive campaign. If you or the guys in your campaign trend toward the latter, I think my advice would just be to use the alternate setting warbands at your own risk.

Ostlanders should be fine...IMO they're kinda middling among human mercs. I've never seen DE in action over an entire campaign, but IIRC the Lustria creators admitted that the Lustrian warbands tend to be a little stronger than the rulebook warbands. So I'd say it's your call. If they end up dominating, you can always ban them in campaign #2.

The player is still the key factor. Shadow Warriors can get disgusting, but you can also play them poorly and lose a lot.